A Texas teenager has been jailed since March 27 over comments he made on Facebook after playing a League of Legends match. In February, an argument 18-year-old Justin Carter had with another League of Legends player spilled onto Facebook, where Carter made a comment referencing a school shooting.

Oh, and the potential consequences are for real:

Quote:

Justin Carter faces eight years in prison

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Free speech? Serious, criminal threat?

What he wrote is akin to yelling 'Fire! Fire!' in a movie theatre. He could be the next Columbine type is the way it is being looked at. Is he? Unlikely. When he gets a little 'prison love' it will calm him down a bit.

__________________Duct tape is like the Force: it has a light side, a dark side, and holds the whole world together.

I love that his father's defense of him is “Justin was the kind of kid who didn't read the newspaper. He didn't watch television. He wasn't aware of current events. These kids, they don't realize what they're doing. They don't understand the implications," Jack Carter said. "They don't understand public space."

It was your job to teach him about public space, to make him aware of current events, and to teach him awareness of what he was doing and the implications of it, you dumb fuck.

What he wrote is akin to yelling 'Fire! Fire!' in a movie theatre. He could be the next Columbine type is the way it is being looked at. Is he? Unlikely. When he gets a little 'prison love' it will calm him down a bit.

Yes, and for doing so he should have been detained, questioned and investigated. Jailed for several months without a trial, though? That is against human rights and insanely fucked up. Also, having a jail where people are treated like scum is not the best way to prepare a person for the life coming back to society (I'm talking in general here). You get an insane amount of repeat offenders this way. That is the result when the prison/court system is built around revenge rather than treatment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by uroboros33

It was your job to teach him about public space, to make him aware of current events, and to teach him awareness of what he was doing and the implications of it, you dumb fuck.

Absolutely correct, and the kid should be severely punished for it. When I say severely punished, being picked up by cops and detained for a few days while the cops investigate the validity of the comments/claims should be enough to scare the shit out of anyone. The only reason for keeping him this long is if the cops have actually found evidence that he was planning something. There is no indication of that, or else the charge would have been different.

People need to get outraged by shit like this. In light of the NSA scandals (yes there have been at least two so far) who knows when we'll actually get arrested for saying crazy shit in our own living room?

I agree with what everyone here is saying. He was being stupid for saying shit like that and his father obviously doesn't know what parenting is. But... he even indicates he was joking and he gets potentially 8 YEARS IN PRISON for this? I... I have no words. How does that make sense and how is it allowed?

Heavy thought police presence here. This is nothing like yelling fire in a theater and nobody was hurt. He's in jail for making a joke. He's stupid yes but, this is just another over-reach by our increasingly zero tolerance society. If you do trash talking while playing online games, you better watch your ass because you might be next.

If he was rich, this would have just been laughed off. Basically, the law these days is increasingly about keeping the proles inline and letting the rich get away with murder. You guys are buying into that too.

Heavy thought police presence here. This is nothing like yelling fire in a theater and nobody was hurt. He's in jail for making a joke. He's stupid yes but, this is just another over-reach by our increasingly zero tolerance society. If you do trash talking while playing online games, you better watch your ass because you might be next.

If he was rich, this would have just been laughed off. Basically, the law these days is increasingly about keeping the proles inline and letting the rich get away with murder. You guys are buying into that too.

Perhaps "fire" in a theater is the wrong example. I would say it's more like someone joking about having a bomb in line at an airport. From our frame of reference, it's all ridiculous - kid said he was joking, no intent of actually doing anything, etc. But the cops have to take that stuff seriously. There have been incidents where folks have talked about going on a shooting spree online, and then done it! Sadly, that's the society we're in today - so saying something online does have consequences.

That's the sad fact here - this kid's parent is basically asserting that he hadn't taught him about consequences, and now the kid is paying for it. Saying you're joking when you make that kind of threat is not good enough, because anyone can say "lol j/k" and then go shoot someone. Now, does the kid deserve 8 years in prison? Unless the cops actually found plans and opportunity to carry out an attack, then i would say no. But he hasn't been tried or sentenced yet - when that happens, if he's found guilty and sent to prison, then i'll gladly join in with the outrage.

What is wrong with this country? I see people calling the 18 year old here a "child" and I just heard a woman call Snowden a "29 year old kid" on the news yet destroying the lives of these people over relatively minor issues is totally acceptable... Insanity.

__________________"This game raped my wife, slaughtered my son and left me for dead."

I don't agree with calling an 18+-year-old a kid/child. In fact, you can be charged as an adult (you may disagree with it, but it is reality) as young as 10-12 years old, depending upon the jurisdiction and the particular charge.

I'm torn over this one. America has criminalized speech to a great degree. Hell, just getting accused of certain things (i.e. "racism" and the like) can completely ruin your life, absent even any criminal behavior or charges; we can't even discuss some issues in the public space any longer. However, it is a fact that most of those who have acted in deadly rampages have provided big, bright road signs to their upcoming behavior, and ignoring those markers is really not an option any longer.

So what do we do? I have no idea. I just know that being a kid today (mentioning again that I don't think 18+ is "a kid/child") doesn't seem to me to be much fun any more. When I was a kid (80s) you could do some seriously STUPID kid-stuff and life would just go on. I can't count the number of idiotic things I did as a kid.

I just don't know. We've taken this whole "police state" and "policing speech" thing to such an extreme. Even with large-scale attacks (terrorist ones, shootings), is America really more dangerous than decades ago? Do we really need to be such a police state? You can't even bring a seat cushion to many sporting events nowadays, or a pack (fanny or otherwise)! It just isn't the same America in my view. Things have changed, and not for the better in most respects.

That's the sad fact here - this kid's parent is basically asserting that he hadn't taught him about consequences, and now the kid is paying for it. Saying you're joking when you make that kind of threat is not good enough, because anyone can say "lol j/k" and then go shoot someone. Now, does the kid deserve 8 years in prison? Unless the cops actually found plans and opportunity to carry out an attack, then i would say no. But he hasn't been tried or sentenced yet - when that happens, if he's found guilty and sent to prison, then i'll gladly join in with the outrage.

The bottom line is he's in jail for months for making a joke. I think it's fine that the cops looked into this, questioned him and had a long chat with his dad about being stupid in public. All that is as it should be. Someone has decided to make an example of him and ruin his life. That's what I have a problem with.

If everything is as his Dad claims, then I was under the impression that for something to be a "terroristic threat" it had to have either had been said with the intent to terrorize or with the intent to cause the evacuation of a building. Neither is the case here. Again, that's if everything the Dad is saying is true and the full story. I have a feeling that Dad might have left out some things though.